Discount Tire (DT)

Helping employees stay with the customer, not the desktop terminal

Role

Associate Product Designer

Timeline

1.5 years

Scale

1,150+ stores, nationwide

01 / Overview

Discount Tire employees could only do key customer tasks, like tire checks and add-on sales, at a desktop terminal. That meant walking away from the customer, and it added 15-20 minutes to each interaction. There was no mobile experience at all.

02 / My Role

I designed the first mobile experience for in-store employees and refreshed the desktop designs it mirrors. I worked across 4 workflows in Project Vision, from wireframes to high-fidelity prototypes and usability testing.

03 / Challenges & Proposed Solutions

Challenges

No mobile experience existed
Employees switching between devices
Glare, gloves, and quick glances mid-conversation
7 siloed workstreams and legacy files

Proposed Solutions

A mobile app built from scratch for Zebra TC77 handhelds
Mobile flows that mirror desktop, so tasks don’t need relearning
Larger text and touch targets, higher contrast, icons, and global navigation
One consistent component system, with legacy files converted to Figma

04 / Key decision

Let users drill in, not dig through

Corporate feedback only goes so far, so I advocated for moderated, in-person testing on the actual Zebra devices. I ran 10 sessions with store employees, which let us read body language and ask follow-up questions in real time. They surfaced navigation problems in low signal and readability problems in direct sunlight, and those findings shaped the final accessibility spec.

05 / Results & impact

I shipped the first mobile experience for Discount Tire’s in-store employees.

Closed an operational gap: Employees can complete tire check and add-on sales paperwork on the spot, instead of returning to a desktop terminal.

Validated with real users: 10 moderated tests on actual hardware, in store, shaped the final accessibility spec.

A reference pattern: As the first mobile build across 7 previously siloed workstreams, it stabilized the components and interactions other teams aligned to for later releases.

"You’ve been the best teammate! We can’t thank YOU enough!”
Michelle Bacani, Senior User Experience Designer, Discount Tire

The reasoning stream, unified multi-model chat, and team analytics dashboard I designed are now live across IBM Consulting Advantage, the platform used by 160,000+ consultants.

Trust in AI outputs: Consultants can now see the steps and sources behind an answer, instead of getting a result they have to take on faith.

One chat instead of many: Switching models and discovering tools now happens in one place.

Visibility for team leads: Team owners can monitor activity, model and agent usage, and performance from one dashboard, so they can make adoption decisions with data.

“Your approach to problem-solving is incredibly impressive. Regardless of the design challenge, you consistently present multiple robust and well-considered solutions that spark valuable discussions amongst us. It's clear that your thought process involves thorough analysis and consideration.”

Susan Aboela-DaSilva, Senior Product Design & Research Lead, IBM Consulting

06 / Reflection & next steps

1. Test where the work happens.
Sunlight and low signal never showed up in a conference room. Testing in store, on the real hardware, changed the design.

2. Build the system while you build the product.
Connecting screens across all seven workstreams exposed missing screens and mismatched components early, so the mobile build became the pattern everyone else aligned to.

What's Next

I'm continuing to iterate on mobile and desktop as new versions roll out, keeping every screen readable in any store condition.

I’m continuing to iterate on mobile and desktop as new versions roll out, keeping every screen readable in any store condition.